KNOWLEDGE BASE

When somebody wants to stop feeling bad, always
it is possible that it will end with drinking alcohol and this way we can find
out that alcohol addiction is a result of the stress hormone.

People who are not alcoholics think that
drinking alcohol for such persons is just kind of pleasure. Maybe not quite
like that but very close. Alcohol makes them feel better and everything seems
for them to be easier. They live in stress and they want to forget about it. So
they want more and more alcohol, what makes them addicted. All the time they
only want to feel better or simply happy. Like others they need something to
make their nerves calm. Some people in such situation eat food, make sex, smoke
cigarettes, do shopping or drink alcohol. And when they find out that it helps
them very quickly, they need it more and more. When somebody is under the most
stress, it is a big temptation to do something, what will stop this at once.
Alcohol is very easy to get.

Scientists found that alcohol
addiction is a result of the stress hormone

Neuroscientists from Scripps Research Institute
in San Diego got new evidence, that if you can get your stress under control,
you can also stop your addiction. The scientists were working on rats, which were cultivated to be addicted to alcohol.
Experts found that suppressing a stress hormone – corticotropin, made rats
drink less. Rats were even prevented from alcoholic dependence. Corticotropin
was releasing factor CRF - the antagonist which counteracts the effects of the
stress hormone, in brain and in a whole body. When the stress hormone was
blocked, the rats started to drink less alcohol. The scientists were very surprised
what happened. The way that CRF antagonist made feel rats was unusual. It
shouldn’t have reduced the pleasure of drinking and it shouldn’t have made
consuming alcohol unpleasant. This hormone triggers in our brain feelings of
anxiety and it also stimulates the fight or not fight response. It makes a
stress reduction, so because of that
rats were less interested in drinking alcohol and even less depended on it. Scientists wanted to know whether the CRF
antagonist can stop the developing of the alcohol addiction. They found out that
when the stress hormone was blocked rats didn’t have a withdrawal and dependence
of alcohol didn’t develop.

This experiences showed that brain and body
stress response for addiction. When we can reduce stress we can stop the
alcohol abuse. Still we don’t have such medication, which can work like CRF
antagonist.It is not widely tested on
or used for humans. We are far away from such drugs for stress reducing. We can
only work on our stress with ourselvesand don’t let the alcohol win with our mind.